Interactive Labs

Three interactive labs enhance and reinforce key concepts
in the course. The labs provide an active learning
experience but also give a "feel" for some of the phenomena
that researchers are exploring in their real-world experiments.

The "ghostly neutrino," first predicted by
Wolfgang Pauli in 1930, was finally discovered in 1956.
Physicists studying neutrinos from the Sun were
mystified, however, because their detectors seemed to indicate
that the Sun wasn't producing enough neutrinos. The mystery
was solved in 1998: neutrinos oscillate! As they travel
though space, neutrinos morph from one type into another,
which is what allowed them to evade the solar neutrino
detectors. Simulate the basic properties of neutrinos
to see how they oscillate and try to match your simulation
to experimental data.

The 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics was awarded for "development of methods
to cool and trap atoms with laser light" because these laboratory
techniques opened the door to fascinating new phenomena such
as macroscopic quantum gases, ultra-precise atomic clocks, and
light slowed to the speed of a bicycle. Use laser light to slow
fast-moving atoms, cooling them enough so they can be trapped.

How did galaxies form? Why are they distributed along enormous
sheets and filaments rather than evenly throughout space?
Massive computer simulations allow us to learn how these
structures formed in the universe by comparing real observations
to simulated universes. Try to build a universe similar
to the one we live in today.